A guide to the programs, entities and people involved in the Northern Beef Packers project: EB-5: Federal visa program where wealthy foreigners can get green cards by investing $500,000 in job-creating businesses. Northern Beef Packers: A bankrupt $115 million beef plant near Aberdeen that received most of its funding from EB-5 money. Epoch Star: A company created for the sole purpose of lending $30 million to Northern Beef, a short-term, 29 percent interest rate loan. Incorporated in the British Virgin Islands and controlled by a Cayman Islands company. Its funding source never was disclosed, but in one document was described as the capital arm of a “major Asian bank.” Eventually, Northern Beef used lower-interest EB-5 money to buy out the Epoch Star loan by purchasing the company. Regional center: An entity, created by the federal government’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, to manage EB-5 investments in a region. They can be run by governments, private companies, or private companies on behalf of governments. South Dakota International Business Institute: The state agency originally granted South Dakota’s regional center in 2004. SDRC Inc.: A private company founded by Joop Bollen that was given a contract to run South Dakota’s EB-5 regional center in December 2009. The contract was canceled this September, nine months ahead of schedule. South Dakota Investment Fund LP 6: One of 10 companies created by SDRC to serve as vehicles for EB-5 investment. SDIF LP 6 received $500,000 investments from 70 Chinese citizens, then lent $35 million to Northern Beef. SDRC was the general partner for SDIF LP 6 and other funds. People

Richard Benda: Secretary of Tourism & State Development, 2006 to 2010. Promoted EB-5 visa investments. Went to work for South Dakota’s EB-5 manager after leaving office. Died from a gunshot wound in late October. Joop Bollen: Led South Dakota’s EB-5 program as director of the South Dakota International Business Institute, a state agency, until 2009. Then resigned and signed a contract to run EB-5 for the state through his private company, SDRC Inc. Pat Costello: Succeeded Benda as economic development secretary. Less interested in EB-5 than Benda and hasn’t promoted it. Imposed minor reforms on SDRC, then eventually canceled its EB-5 contract under mysterious circumstances. Mike Rounds: Governor from 2003 to 2010. Supported EB-5 as a tool to attract investment to South Dakota. Promoted Northern Beef Packers plant as part of his Certified South Dakota Beef initiative. Now running for U.S. Senate. Jim Smith: President of Northern State University starting in June 2009, where he had oversight of the International Business Institute. Urged Benda to find a different way to structure the EB-5 program because it didn’t fit Northern’s mission.

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The high-profile Northern Beef Packers plant, now bankrupt and under federal investigation, wasn’t the only big South Dakota project funded by a controversial visa program.

More than a dozen other projects here — from a power plant and several dairies to a Black Hills hotel and casino — were funded in whole or part by wealthy foreigners investing $500,000 each in exchange for green cards through the federal EB-5 program. Many of those projects are successful enterprises. But at least one other is a prominent failure.

Dakota Provisions borrowed $55 million from 110 foreign EB-5 investors. The plant now employs about 800 people, though it’s not yet running at full capacity. It produces about

5 million turkeys per year, and could double that if it added a second shift. So far, Rutledge said, the plant’s turkey supply doesn’t permit that, but he predicted it would add at least a partial second shift in around three years.

Before then, Dakota Provisions’ EB-5 loan will come due, and it will be expected to return the principal to EB-5 investors. Rutledge said the company has made all of its interest payments to date and expects to pay off its loans at the end of next year, on schedule.

For Dakota Provisions, EB-5 was a late addition to its financing. The turkey plant, which opened in 2006, initially paid for construction with bank loans.

It then replaced that debt with a 2009 EB-5 loan.

“It was a business decision we made that gave us funding at a lower interest rate,” Rutledge said.

Northern Beef made a similar, though more dramatic, decision. It had borrowed $30 million from a mysterious company in the British Virgin Islands. The beef plant then used a $35 million EB-5 loan at 3.5 percent interest to buy its lender, wiping out the 29 percent offshore loan.

No help for wind farm

Bringing EB-5 funding into a project after completion didn’t work for Iberdrola Renewables’ Buffalo Ridge II wind farm. The international energy company financed its $350 million project itself, “as we do with a lot of our projects in the U.S.,” said company spokesman Paul Copleman.

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The wind farm was finished in December 2010. Then Iberdrola tried to replace $100 million of that with money from the EB-5 program.

But U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that manages the EB-5 program, said no.

“We were ultimately rejected for receipt of the funding,” Copleman said. He said the rejection was tied to the fact that the project already was finished.

The rejection came after the company managing EB-5 investments in South Dakota, SDRC Inc., created a company to fund Buffalo Ridge II and solicited 200 overseas investors.

Another energy project had better luck. Multistate power company Basin Electric used EB-5 to help pay for its $400 million Deer Creek power station near Elkton. EB-5 money provided $105 million of that cost.

Unlike Iberdrola, Basin Electric signed its EB-5 loan agreement six months before breaking ground. The 300-megawatt plant began operating in August 2012 and still is running.

“It gave us a favorable interest rate for about one-fourth of the total cost of the project,” said Curt Pearson, Basin Electric’s project coordinations representative. “The process that was advertised ... it worked well for us, and we were satisfied.”

Pearson said Basin Electric will “absolutely” pay off its EB-5 loans when they come due in 2015.

EB-5 investors in Northern Beef weren’t so lucky. The 120 Chinese nationals who lent $500,000 each to the Aberdeen beef plant now are battling in bankruptcy court to get as much of their investment back as they can. With other creditors also battling over the plant’s limited assets, and the minimum bid for the $115 million plant barely more than one-tenth that amount, many observers are convinced those investors could lose everything.

A similar disaster happened to foreign investors in the Veblen dairies. The multimillion dollar Veblen East dairy went bankrupt in 2010, along with its cousin, the Veblen West dairy. They were bought in bankruptcy by a Minnesota company.

Veblen East was paid for through an older version of the EB-5 program, where foreign investors bought equity in the company instead of making a loan.

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The Veblen EB-5 funding also was issued while a South Dakota state agency still was running EB-5 investments here. In December 2009, the state signed a contract with SDRC Inc. to take over EB-5 promotion. SDRC was a private company founded by Joop Bollen, who had been running EB-5 as a state agency head.

SDRC was an aggressive promoter of the EB-5 program. Michael Gibson, an EB-5 expert with USAdvisors.org, said SDRC was one of the top six EB-5 “regional centers” in the country.

Neither Iberdrola nor Basin Electric ever had used EB-5 money for any projects before their South Dakota efforts, and haven’t since then.

Pearson said SDRC approached Basin Electric to discuss EB-5 financing, not the other way around.

Benefit in Deadwood

Another apparently successful EB-5 project was the Deadwood Mountain Grand casino, hotel and event center in the Black Hills. It’s been open for several years and has hosted concerts from multiple big-name acts. Management of the Deadwood Mountain Grand couldn’t be reached Friday.

In September, South Dakota canceled SDRC’s contract to run the EB-5 program.

The cancellation came as criminal investigators started examining both EB-5 and South Dakota’s economic development efforts before 2011, when EB-5 was a significant part of state policy.

It’s unclear exactly what wrongdoing, if any, happened in South Dakota’s EB-5 program. Critics have said it lacks oversight and often encourages investment in marginal projects that can’t get traditional funding. Supporters, on the other hand, say it’s a valuable source of capital, especially when credit dried up after the 2008 market crash.

Count Rutledge in the latter category.

“I think it’s just totally unfortunate that the situation developed at Northern Beef Processors, because I think it’s probably going to set back the EB-5 program,” he said.